Unwanted (36 page)

Peder had spoken to Alex that morning. Nobody had rung in with any sensible information to date. Peder felt a sudden weariness and dejection. How far did they really think they were going to get with an ancient photo, a useless identikit drawing and a name that Monika Sander might not even use any longer?

Then it suddenly came back to Peder what he had overlooked when they released the information about Monika. He parked outside HQ and rushed up to the department.

Alex had just come back to his room with a cup of coffee when Peder came hurtling through the door.

Alex hardly got his ‘Good morning’ out before Peder started.

‘We’ve got to issue a double name,’ he gabbled.

‘What are you talking about?’ asked a bewildered Alex.

‘Monika Sander,’ Peder blurted. ‘We’ve got to ring the tax people and find out what her name was when she first came to Sweden. She was adopted, wasn’t she? She might have found out the name she was born with and be using it as an alias or something.’

‘Well we’ve already gone public with the name Monika Sander, but . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘I was just going to say that it’s a very good idea, Peder,’ Alex said evenly. ‘Get Ellen on the case; she can ring the tax office.’

Peder dashed out of the room and sprinted off in the direction of Ellen’s room.

Alex gave a wry smile. It was amazing to see a human being with that much energy.

I
n another part of Stockholm, two people with considerably less energy than Peder Rydh were also busy. Ingeborg and Johannes Myrberg were down on their hands and knees at either end of their large garden, weeding conscientiously between the shrubs and flowering plants. The rain had kept them from any sort of work in the garden until now, but at least summer seemed to have arrived. Admittedly there were a few clouds loitering around the sun, but as long as it was still shining and shedding its warmth, Ingeborg and Johannes Myrberg were more than happy.

Ingeborg took a quick glance at her watch. It was almost eleven. They had been out there for nearly two hours. Without a break. She shaded her eyes with her hand and looked across to her husband. Johannes had had a few prostate problems in recent years and was usually hurrying off to the toilet all the time. But not this morning. No, this morning they had both worked on undisturbed.

Ingeborg’s face broke into a smile as she watched her husband weeding round the rhubarb. They still took a childlike delight in their domain. In their heart of hearts, they had never really believed the house would be theirs. So many properties had passed them by. Either they were too expensive, or they turned out to have mould in the basement or damp patches on the ceilings.

Ingeborg surveyed the big, white house. It was attractive and a good size. There were enough rooms to accommodate all the children and grandchildren when they came to visit, but was still compact enough to retain its charm and the sense of really being someone’s home.
Their
home.

‘Johannes!’ Ingeborg called into the quietness of the garden.

Johannes almost overbalanced at the sound of Ingeborg’s shout, and she laughed.

‘I was just going to say: I’m going in for a minute to get a drink. Would you like one, too?’

Johannes gave that slightly lopsided smile, so familiar to her throughout their married life. For thirty-five years, to be exact.

‘A glass of the strawberry cordial would be nice.’

Ingeborg got slowly to her feet, her knees protesting slightly. When she was young, she had never considered that her body would feel weaker and frailer one day.

‘What a summer we’ve had,’ she said under her breath as she stepped into the house from the terrace.

Then she froze. Afterwards she couldn’t really explain why she had stopped just there, just then. Or how she had sensed without going any further that something was wrong.

She walked slowly through the guest room that gave onto the terrace, and out into the corridor between the four bedrooms. She looked left, where the bedrooms were, but nothing was moving. She looked right, towards the main hall, the kitchen and the living room. She could see nothing strange or out of the ordinary there, either. Yet she still knew that someone had been there, that her home had been violated.

She shook her head. What a ridiculous thought; was she getting paranoid in her old age?

She regained control of her thoughts and her home by striding off to the kitchen and making two big glasses of cordial for herself and her husband.

She was just on her way out with the little tray when she decided it would be as well to pop to the toilet while she was in. She just couldn’t fathom how Johannes had managed to go for so long without a pee.

The bathroom was at the far end of the house, beyond the bedrooms. Afterwards, she couldn’t really remember how she got there. She only remembered putting the tray down and being aware that she needed to go to the loo. Whether she remembered it or not, she must have gone from the kitchen to the hall, and along the corridor to the bathroom. Put her hand on the handle, pressed it down, opened the door, turned the light on.

She saw the baby straight away. It was lying naked on the bathroom mat, curled up in a foetal position.

For a few seconds, Ingeborg did not really understand what she was seeing. She had to step forward and bend down. Automatically her hand went out to touch the baby. It was only when her fingers made contact with the hard, cold body that she started to scream.

F
redrika Bergman got the call about the discovery of the dead baby at the elderly couple’s house just as she was being served tea by Margareta Andersson, grandmother of Nora who had been found murdered in Jönköping. Fredrika had to excuse herself and go out onto the balcony.

‘On a bathroom mat?’ she repeated.

‘Yes,’ said Alex grimly, ‘in a house in Bromma. With the same word on her forehead. I’m heading there now. Peder’s on his way to see some psychologist.’

Fredrika frowned.

‘All this must have really got to him, then?’

Alex gave a chuckle of surprise.

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘It’s for the case. He decided we could do with the help of one of those profilers, and it would be good if he could get us one.’

Alex was expressing himself so badly and casually that Fredrika thought he must have been drinking. ‘One of those profilers’ and ‘some psychologist’. They didn’t grow on trees.

‘He read about him in the paper,’ Alex explained. ‘That’s what gave him the idea.’

‘Read about who?’ Fredrika asked, at a loss.

‘An American profiler who works for the FBI is over here lecturing to some behavioural science scientists at the university,’ Alex said, more controlled now. ‘Peder was going to try to arrange a meeting with him through some friend of his who’s on the course.’

‘Okay,’ Fredrika said slowly.

‘Is everything all right your end?’ Alex asked.

‘Yes, fine. I’ll get back to Stockholm as soon as I’ve finished here.’

She was silent for a moment.

‘But why ever should the baby turn up in Bromma?’ she went on.

‘You mean he’s breaking the pattern?’

‘I don’t know about any pattern,’ mumbled Fredrika. ‘Maybe we’ve just been imagining there was a clear link to Umeå.’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Alex. ‘But I do think we need to find a better common denominator.’

‘A common denominator of a bathroom in Bromma and a town in Norrland,’ Fredrika sighed.

‘Yes, that’s our second challenge,’ Alex said firmly. ‘To try to understand the connection between the bathroom in Bromma and the A&E department at Umeå hospital. Assuming the geography has any relevance at all, that is.’

If the situation hadn’t been so grave, Fredrika would have allowed herself to laugh.

‘Are you there?’ Alex asked, when she said nothing.

‘Sorry, I was just thinking. What’s our first challenge?’ Fredrika responded. ‘You said the connections were the second one.’

‘Finding Monika Sander,’ said Alex. ‘I don’t think we’re going to understand a bloody thing about this whole mess until we talk to her.’

Fredrika couldn’t help smiling, but immediately felt guilty. She felt awful, smiling when a baby had just been found dead.

‘Okay,’ she said soberly. ‘We’ll just have to do our best.’

‘You bet your life we will,’ Alex said with a sigh.

Fredrika put her mobile away and returned to the flat. She apologized to her hostess.

‘I’m sorry. I had to take that call.’

Margareta nodded to show she accepted the apology.

‘Have you found the baby now, as well?’ she asked, to Fredrika’s astonishment.

‘Yes,’ she said hesitantly, after a pause. ‘Yes, we have. But it isn’t official yet, so I’d really appreciate it if . . .’

Margareta gave a dismissive wave of the hand.

‘Of course I won’t say anything,’ she said. ‘And I don’t talk to anybody anyway, except Tintin.’

‘Tintin?’ Fredrika echoed.

‘My cat,’ grinned Margareta, and indicated a seat for Fredrika at the table laid with teacups and a plate of sliced bun loaf.

Fredrika liked Margareta’s voice. It was deep and throaty, dark yet still feminine. Margareta herself was as broad-shouldered as a wrestler. She was not fat or heavy looking, but simply stable in the purest sense of the word. Safe was another word that came spontaneously into Fredrika’s mind.

She automatically ran over all the information she had had from the Jönköping police about Nora, the murdered woman. Spent her childhood in various foster homes; mental problems; recurring periods of sick leave. In a relationship with the man suspected of having murdered her, Lilian Sebastiansson and now the baby. Moved from Umeå to Jönköping. Held down a job, looked after a home, but had no family and few acquaintances.

Fredrika decided to start from the beginning.

‘How did Nora come to be in a foster home?’

Nora’s grandmother grew very still. So still that Fredrika thought she could hear Tintin purring as he lay there in his basket.

‘Do you know what, I wondered that, too,’ she said slowly.

Then she took a deep breath and laid her wrinkled old hands in her lap. She plucked at the hem of her frock. The fabric was red and brown. To Fredrika’s mind, it was definitely a winter frock.

‘You always try not to have too many expectations of your children. Well my husband and I did, at least. And when he died, I carried on the same way. But . . . But you do have certain basic expectations, you can’t help it. Of course you want your children to grow up and be able to look after themselves. But Nora’s mother never really did, I’m afraid. And we didn’t have any more children.’

Margareta tailed off, and Fredrika did not realize until she raised her head from her notebook that the other woman was crying.

‘We can take a break if you like,’ she said uncertainly.

Margareta gave a weary shake of the head.

‘It’s just that it hurts so much to think I’ve got neither of the girls left now,’ she sobbed. ‘I felt so wretched when Nora’s mother died. But I knew what sort of life she’d lived, how
hard
it had been for her. There was really only one way it could end. But then I could console myself that at least I had Nora left. And now she’s gone, too.’

Tintin came out of his basket and approached the table. Fredrika quickly pulled her legs aside. She had never liked cats.

‘Things went wrong for Nora’s mother early on in her life,’ Margareta told her. ‘Very early on. When she was still in secondary school, just after her dad died. She got into bad company and brought home one boyfriend after another. I was beside myself when she decided to leave school as soon as she could and go out to work instead. She got a job in a sweet factory; it closed down years ago. But she didn’t stick to the rules, and she got the sack. I think that was when she turned to prostitution and the more dangerous drugs.’

In Fredrika’s family there was a very conservative saying that went: ‘In every woman of every age there lives a Mother.’ She wondered if she herself was harbouring one. And she wondered what she would have said in that position, if her daughter had dropped out of school, started work in a factory and gone on the game.

‘Who was Nora’s father?’ Fredrika asked cautiously.

Margareta gave a bitter laugh and wiped away her tears.

‘You tell me,’ she said. ‘It could have been literally anybody. Nora’s mother didn’t register a father’s name when Nora was born. I was with her for the birth. It was several days before she would even hold little Nora.’

The sun vanished briefly behind a cloud and it went darker inside the flat. Fredrika felt cold, sitting there.

‘Nora was as unwanted as a child could possibly be,’ Margareta whispered. ‘Her mother hated her even when she was still in her stomach; she hoped for a long time she might have a miscarriage. But she didn’t. Nora was born whether she liked it or not.’

Fredrika felt the floor lurch beneath her.

‘Unwanted,’ she repeated softly.